AI 'Preferences'

I was playing a M2TW campaign the other night and noticed something, combining it with other things I noticed from past campaigns and was wondering if anyone else had such observations or ideas as to why this happens. Well, I was playing a HRE campaign, at the very beginning, and decided to take Hamburg (sp.) for the large castle there. The Danes seiged it first so I attacked the Danes, defeated them, and took the castle. For about 30 more turns they did absolutely nothing. Did not try to take the castle from me, did not expand north, and did not take antwerp which the always seemed to do in my previous campaigns as England, Scotland and France. This brings me to the point of my post (no matter however vague). Is the AI predispositioned to take certain areas and do little more? Are they not expansionist at all? Or is the AI just plain dumb? I've noticed Portugal usually goes for that castle just north of polermo. Milan always takes Dijon. England and Scotland seem to like that city between their two starting points, but england won't take the city in wales and scotland seldom goes for dublin. Just curious if this is how the AI expansion works. No examples for the east as I always play as a catholic faction. One last rant/observation and I'll let you go. Milan was at war with venice, had several large armies near the city and never attacked it, despite venice being very underpowered. I seiged venice a few turns earlier and venice sent a relief army. Also, England was attacking a slight garrison in paris and just called off the attack for no apparent reason. France had a large army mabey two cities away but never moved it. The AI seems to raise armies well but never reallly uses them. Don't get we wrong, I enjoy the game, but noticed these things recently. Hopefully I didn't lose anyone with my ramblings.

Whit what campaign difficulty were you playing?
AI can be rather aggressive when played with Very Hard campaign difficulty.
But I have also noticed the things you mentioned.

I've been playing the custom campaign/retro fit mod and normal/normal I think. It never even occured to me to try a harder difficulty...

I'd recommend vh/vh personally, doesnt add much to the challenge however.

The AI is a bit of a crapshoot, you never know what you'll get (thanks Forrest) if at all anything. Potugal always went for Caernarvon for some strange reason.

It's related to the Council of Lords.
I think the AI will sometimes attack opportunistically but will drop everything to send an army at the request of the Council.

I'd just like them to expand more, more of a STW expansion if you will. Going after the same old cities then stalling only to produce large armies it never uses is quite pointless and frustrating as well. It only adds to challenge as you expand, leaves nothing on the defensive end of things. At least in my experiences anyway. Sometimes seems like they have a city capturing routine that if interupted, causes them to stall. Again, this is all in my experience...in normal/normal of course.

I' had always been disappointed with AI expansion myself - the best any faction could manage ever was about 14-15 provinces and thats in just about every mod I ever played. That was until I played the latest Stainless Steel 6.2 compilation mod and finally the AI factions were fielding decent empires. Until I killed my graphics card I (playing as the Teutonic Order) had 32 provinces, Egypt had about 30 and France until they got excommed had about 25. The Mongols who are on steroids in this mod had about 40 provinces until they got owned by me and Egypt.

Finally happy with something and then :tnt:

I tried Stainless Steel, still have it on my computer but it's not installed. I didn't really like that the AI didn't attack though. That's what I heard anyway, that's why I stopped playing. Sieges were difficult as well! Though I'm not the best player in the world. Perhaps you could enlighten me to some of the finer points of this mod. I have custom campaign/retro fit on right now, I think you can use other mods with it, though I did unpack it. Would this be a problem during install. I could install vanilla and kingdoms again though, it wouldn't be the end of the world!